


The Essay (The Plants In Good Omens Feel Fear)

by raidiation



Series: The Plants In Good Omens Feel Fear [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Other, don't read if you're not in the mood for an existential crisis, full essay, it's rated teen for existential horror, mostly because i wrote a full essay on this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 22:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19451167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raidiation/pseuds/raidiation
Summary: Since the plants shake with fear when Crowley threatens them, it naturally follows that not only can plants in the Good Omens T.V. universe hear, that they can move, and they can also experience fear. In this essay I will—(except in this essay i actually did)





	The Essay (The Plants In Good Omens Feel Fear)

**Author's Note:**

> I stayed up until 2 A.M. writing this, and i would just like to say that I'm sorry.
> 
> (I have to credit Ari from my last Good Omens fanfic. Thank you for providing more existential questions to this awful piece of writing.)

*page numbers are cited from the kindle edition 

Rai (Last Name Redacted)

No Teacher Would Ever Support This

As If I Could Get Away With Writing This For A Class

2 July 2019

The Implicit Horror of the Plants in Good Omens

The book Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, chronicles the actions of an angel and a demon, the antichrist and his friends, and a couple of others, as the world comes to an end. A recent television adaptation brought attention to the cult classic, which immediately became a fan favorite, starring beloved actors David Tennant and Michael Sheen, among others. The show managed to stay quite true to the original story, as might be expected, with one of the authors of the book as a showrunner. The purpose of this essay, however, is not to dwell on the nuances of the show, or the ingenuity of the book. The purpose of this essay is to examine a detail in the television show that is often glossed over—the shaking of Crowley’s plants.

Crowley, who keeps houseplants in his apartment, is shown to directly affect them by speaking to them. Crowley is said to “put the fear of God” (Gaiman, 254) into the plants by talking to them; or rather, by threatening them with implied murder. In the book, Crowley picks an unsatisfactory plant and leaves, before returning “an hour or so later with a large, empty flower pot, which he would leave somewhere conspicuously around the flat” (254). The show gives a similar narrative, except with a rather more explicit method of threatening from Crowley. Instead of simply leaving the flat, he leaves the room, and there is a whirring sound akin to a woodchipper or a paper shredder before he returns to the room with an empty pot. The fate of the chosen plant, or at the least, the percepted fate of the chosen plant, is obvious, and in the show, the leaves of the plants shake with fear. The real horror of this, however, lies not in the fact that Crowley talks to his plants, or threatens them with death. The real horror is that the plants are afraid of the fate that he threatens them with. The plants in Good Omens, canonically, experience fear.

There is a plethora of evidence for this claim, between the book and the show. The most obvious is the shaking, a typical expression of fear. As Neil Gaiman was involved with the production of the show, though the show and the book are two separate pieces, it means that one has no choice but to accept the show into Good Omens canon, and therefore, the shaking of the plants’ leaves is fair evidence. However, one cannot rely on visual evidence alone. The book states that the plants in Crowley’s apartment have “the fear of Crowley” (254) put into them, a fact stated by the narrator in the show, as well. Not only that, but the book later goes on to affirm that the plants are “the most terrified” (254) in London. This, of course, brings with it an assurance that the plants are actually afraid, and experiencing a state of fright. That, coupled with the shaking of the leaves, proves three things; one, that the plants in Crowley’s apartment have the capacity for emotion, two, that they are capable of movement, whether voluntary or involuntary, in response to this emotion, and three, that the plants are capable of either sight or hearing or both. Crowley’s methods of intimidation are either verbal or visual, and involve no physical contact with the plants who stay in the room. Since the plants respond to Crowley’s threats with fear, it is fair to say that they possess one or both of the aforementioned senses, since they are able to understand either his words or his actions. As for the moving; of course, typical plants are capable of movement, as with all living things (evidenced by a gradual movement to face sunlight), but these plants are specifically characterized with the ability to shake with fear. This attributes these houseplants with more physical and emotional autonomy than a typical plant. Sentience is defined by the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary as “feeling or sensation as distinguished from perception and thought,” and is simplified by Wikipedia as “the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively.” Emotions are universally subjective, and the experience of fear as an emotion means that these plants do indeed have the capacity to experience reality subjectively. They are cognizant enough to interpret Crowley’s threats, which never involve explicit explanation or visuals of the doom of the unlucky plants, as a threat of death, and to fear them. From this, one can infer that not only are these plants sentient, but they have a concept of death, or at the very least, great bodily harm. If they did not, what would they have to fear from the disappearance of the other plants?

This brings us around to a question; if the plants can fear, what else can they feel? Crowley tells the plants to “‘Say goodbye to [their] friend’” (254); just how right is he? Do these plants have the capacity for friendship? For love? Do they have families? Loved ones? Enemies? If they can hear and feel and move, are they capable of communication? Can they establish societies? They draw conclusions from Crowley’s inexplicit threats despite never actually seeing or hearing the outcome, which attributes them with an imagination of some sort. An imagination brings about the very likely possibility that the plants can think, can have thought processes, can feel the world and rationalize it in its constant state of fear. 

The plants have been proven to be sentient, but it brings about yet another question; if they are sentient, how and when did they acquire said sentience? Crowley’s imagination has been proven to be quite a formidable force, and is tasked with holding a flaming vehicle together over miles of road. If Crowley’s imagination can have such an effect on what could loosely be referred to as reality itself, it is feasible that he could have imagined the plants into sentience, simply by wishing that the tip he’d heard on the radio about talking to plants would be effective. The plants that Crowley gave sentience to would forever be trapped with the object of their greatest fears. It’s also possible that all of the plants in the Good Omens universe are sentient. The book and the narrator of the show state that the plants in Crowley’s apartment are the “most terrified” (254) in London. Is this simply because they are the only plants that live in fear, or is it only because they live with a literal demon? Are the other plants in London, in the rest of the world, sentient? If so, can they hear the world as a seed, muffled through the earth or the paper of a seed packet, or do they develop their senses as they grow? Do the seeds awaken under the earth, unable to see until they are blinded by light? The plants are afraid of death, or afraid of not existing anymore. Are all plants so cruelly aware that there is an end to their existence? Do they watch weeds being crushed underfoot and realize their own mortality? Can the plants, in their sentience, in their ability to move their ‘bodies’, feel pain? When a young lover picks a flower, are they ending the life of a sentient being?

In essence, whatever the answers to these hypothetical questions, the truth beyond it all, the horrifying truth that none should forget, is that the plants in Good Omens experience fear. They have free will, and can move, but to what avail? They will never be able to move far enough to escape Crowley or the inevitable march of death, trapped in the soil by roots and unable to grow anywhere but up. They fear death. They can be killed. They have imaginations, vivid enough to draw conclusions from Crowley’s threats, conclusions that they are afraid of. The plants in Good Omens are not far from us, for all that we prize our humanity, our emotions, our imagination, because the plants in Good Omens feel fear.

WORKS CITED

Gaiman, Neil, and Terry Pratchett. _Good Omens: the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch_. HarperCollins Publishers, 2019.

“Sentient.” _Merriam-Webster_ , Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient.

**Author's Note:**

> (Link to original document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DROENzPUSDH0WVG6jFFuboOk6fzkxNTactsLFL6zeB8/edit?usp=sharing)
> 
> I'm well aware that I could have done more with this. Could've dug deeper. Unfortunately, this was all done in one sitting, past midnight, and the multiple existential crises that I had while writing it were not very conducive to a good essay. It's not really edited, but the truth had to be put out there, had to be brought to the attention of the masses. Again, I'm sorry.
> 
> Reblog it on Tumblr here: https://rai-of-sunshine.tumblr.com/post/186007025643/since-the-plants-shake-with-fear-when-crowley


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